#298853 - 02/06/2007 22:23
What is new in 3.0?
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member
Registered: 13/09/2000
Posts: 186
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is there an FAQ or anything anywhere that lists some of the new features in the 3.x firmware that is new from the 2.x version? Same thing also with the 3.x emplode.??
Just trying to decide if I wanna mess around with the alpha software. I will if there is a cool enough improvement, even if its dodgy. but it depends on what is new.
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#298854 - 03/06/2007 04:57
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: dewdman42]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
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There are release notes for the alpha software, but not a FAQ. You should be able to find the release notes in the same place you download the alpha software (I think).
The big feature that alpha 3.0 offers is playback of OGG and FLAC files. If you don't need to play those kinds of files, the "alpha" part of alpha 3.0 makes it something you don't want to just install on a whim.
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#298855 - 03/06/2007 05:09
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: tfabris]
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member
Registered: 13/09/2000
Posts: 186
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Yea I saw the release notes, but I couldn't find anything that lists what is new since 2.0.. each of the 3.x releasses explains some of the bug fixes, etc within the 3.x range....
Anyway, if OGG and FLAC are mainly the only real difference and there is nothing else, then I am perfectly happy with 2.01 once I get it working again. thanks!
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#298856 - 03/06/2007 11:49
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: dewdman42]
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member
Registered: 09/03/2003
Posts: 121
Loc: Iowa
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3.0 has crossfade and gapless playback
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#298857 - 03/06/2007 12:46
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: Gleep]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
3.0 has crossfade and gapless playback
Yup, those two features are huge!
Under the hood, it has a mostly new/improved sound processing pipeline,
which some of us think makes a very audible difference in sound quality.
But that conclusion has not been verified with double-blind testing.
Cheers
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#298858 - 03/06/2007 15:08
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: mlord]
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member
Registered: 13/09/2000
Posts: 186
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Oh really. Ok, now I'm convinced to try it.. ha ha. thanks.
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#298859 - 03/06/2007 18:48
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: dewdman42]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
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Doesn't every version have gapless playback?
On one gapless album which I created myself, the typical tiny gap stands out horribly. Probably because I chose bad places for the gaps. No, there are no gaps in the audio, as I cut up a 70 min WAV file; unless EAC/lame added some.
Are you saying 3.0 has reduced that tiny gap between tracks even further?
_________________________
- FireFox31 110gig MKIIa (30+80), Eutronix lights, 32 meg stacked RAM, Filener orange gel lens, Greenlights Lit Buttons green set
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#298860 - 03/06/2007 22:39
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: FireFox31]
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member
Registered: 09/03/2003
Posts: 121
Loc: Iowa
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Quote:
Doesn't every version have gapless playback?
No version prior to 3 had gapless playback. MP3 format doesn't even support gapless playback but the Empeg people made it work anyway. As I understand it, MP3's are created using frames and each frame is 26ms long. So unless a track is exactly a multiple of 26ms long there will be a gap. Version 3 software looks at the last frame and starting at the point in the frame where the volume drops to zero removes the rest of that frame and jumps immediately to the 1st frame of the next track there by removing the gap. Ogg Vorbis has built in support for gapless playback but I would recommend that you stick with MP3 on the Empeg.
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#298861 - 04/06/2007 06:33
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: FireFox31]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Quote:
Doesn't every version have gapless playback?
On one gapless album which I created myself, the typical tiny gap stands out horribly. Probably because I chose bad places for the gaps. No, there are no gaps in the audio, as I cut up a 70 min WAV file; unless EAC/lame added some.
Prior to v3, the only way to get gapless playback was to use "lame --nogap" and encode all the WAV files of an album in one invocation of Lame. AFAIK no GUI-based rippers could do that.
In v3, the firmware pays attention to the Lame "info header", which is added to all MP3s by modern versions of Lame (and to VBR tracks even by oldish versions). It also has heuristic silence-trimming, for non-Lame MP3s and for WMA.
Peter
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#298862 - 04/06/2007 12:35
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: Gleep]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Quote:
MP3's are created using frames and each frame is 26ms long. So unless a track is exactly a multiple of 26ms long there will be a gap.
And that's not the worst of it. Even if the start and end points of your track *would* fall exactly on frame boundaries, the encoders (for the most part) don't begin the audio data at the very beginning of the frame. There seems to be some random amount of encoder spool-up time in the first couple of audio frames, causing a bit of silence to play back after the 00:00.00 mark of a track.
The exception to this was later versions of LAME, when using special encoding parameters, as was mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
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#298863 - 04/06/2007 23:05
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: tfabris]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
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Wow, version 1 and 2 always sounded pretty darn gapless to me. I seem to remember the explanation as "the cache is so agressive that it prepares the next FEW songs for instant playback, incase you skip forward or back."
But 3 is even better? Amazing.
_________________________
- FireFox31 110gig MKIIa (30+80), Eutronix lights, 32 meg stacked RAM, Filener orange gel lens, Greenlights Lit Buttons green set
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#298864 - 05/06/2007 01:57
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: FireFox31]
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member
Registered: 13/09/2000
Posts: 186
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Hmm, Well I loaded up the latest 3.0 firmware. Some interesting wierdness. First of all, everytime I power on the empeg it takes several minutes to build the the music database before I can play anything. Is that normal for everyone?
Secondly, when I try to use the new emplode with it, emplode coughs up an error almost immediately while trying to read the database from the Empeg.
Hmm, guess I'll go back to 2.01 unless anyone has any ideas. I like the oval lines around the menus...didn't listen to the audio to see if it really has better decoding quality...will jsut stick with 2.01 I guess...
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#298865 - 05/06/2007 05:52
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: dewdman42]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 02/06/2000
Posts: 1996
Loc: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Quote:
First of all, everytime I power on the empeg it takes several minutes to build the the music database before I can play anything. Is that normal for everyone?
No
Quote:
Secondly, when I try to use the new emplode with it, emplode coughs up an error almost immediately while trying to read the database from the Empeg.
Sounds like your DB got hosed somehow - on each start the player now has to read all the fids off disk and build the DB in memory. But since the drives are mounted read-only it can't write the resulting DB to disk - thus hving to do it all over again on the next boot and it still being hosed as emplode tries to get it...
Here's the FAQ on the issue, with instructions on how to fix it. Do read the linked entries as well!
_________________________
/Michael
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#298866 - 05/06/2007 11:55
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: dewdman42]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
Hmm, Well I loaded up the latest 3.0 firmware. Some interesting wierdness. First of all, everytime I power on the empeg it takes several minutes to build the the music database before I can play anything. Is that normal for everyone?
Secondly, when I try to use the new emplode with it, emplode coughs up an error almost immediately while trying to read the database from the Empeg.
That should all be in the FAQ somewhere. V3 software requires a very specific version of Emplode (forgot which). And the V3 software has it's own, separate, database format and database3 file (which can coexist with the V2 database file).
Since you only installed the software, there is no database3 file, so it creates a temporary one at each boot (disks are read-only, so it doesn't save it permanently).
If you just connect via serial, and then hit <control^C> (and wait..) you should get a shell ("command") prompt. At which you can do this to build a permanent database:
rwm
player
# wait for database build to happen / finish
<control^C>
rom
exit
That sequence (above) is also in the FAQ.. somewhere.. 
Edited by mlord (05/06/2007 11:56)
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#298867 - 05/06/2007 14:50
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: dewdman42]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Quote:
Hmm, Well I loaded up the latest 3.0 firmware. Some interesting wierdness.
Bound to happen when you use ALPHA software. 
Quote:
First of all, everytime I power on the empeg it takes several minutes to build the the music database before I can play anything. Is that normal for everyone?
YES. I got that error every single time I tried going from 2.0 to 3.0.
Do the databases fix from the FAQ (Linked in one of the replies above).
Quote:
Secondly, when I try to use the new emplode with it, emplode coughs up an error almost immediately while trying to read the database from the Empeg.
This will likely get fixed when you do the databases fix. Even if you go back to 2.0, you're going to need to do that database fix.
In my case, even after doing that fix, I had a problem in 3.0 where after a few synchs, all my playlists would get scrambled and a bunch of songs got orphaned. That's why I've stuck with 2.0 since then. But your playlists might not be as large or as convoluted as mine, so that bug might not bite you.
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#298868 - 05/06/2007 15:01
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: FireFox31]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Quote:
Wow, version 1 and 2 always sounded pretty darn gapless to me.
Version 2 would play two adjacent songs right up against each other as best it could. The instant one song was done playing, the next one would start playing. That's probably your definition of gapless.
But to truly play "Dark Side of the Moon" (the ultimate litmus test for gapless playback), that's not enough. To play *truly* gapless (no "blips" when playing Dark Side of the Moon) requires that the software work around the limitations of the MP3 format, and it must deliberately dovetail the "holes" at the beginning and end of each MP3 file, and perhaps even do a tiny bit of crossfading. I'm not sure exactly how 3.0 handles this task, but I know they worked on it. (One of the empeg team explained it elsewhere on this BBS, anyone got a link?)
As far as I know, the empeg is the only player that even *tries* to handle it. Well, the only one that tries to handle it on-the-fly. The ipod does it these days, but it only does it via some special trickery on the server-side in iTunes, it doesn't try to do it on-the-fly. Anyone else know of any other gapless players these days?
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#298869 - 05/06/2007 15:11
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Quote:
Anyone else know of any other gapless players these days?
Squeezebox, apparently. And a few others, including anything you can stick Rockbox on.
Peter
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#298870 - 05/06/2007 16:32
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: peter]
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member
Registered: 13/09/2000
Posts: 186
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Guys, thanks for all the info. I have gone back to 2.01 and the music database appears to be fine, boots up in seconds as normal. So I'm not sure that original music database got hosed. If I get time next week I will try 3.0 again and use the steps mlord outlined for manually building a new database. But that will not overwrite the old 2.x one?
Also, in the FAQ you showed me, it mentions using the developer build. I was using the consumer build. Am I supposed to be using the developer build for 3.0?
Anyway, I can't get to it until next week at this point, but thanks for all the info.
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#298871 - 05/06/2007 16:42
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: dewdman42]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
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The only difference between consumer and developer builds is whether or not a shell prompt is available. You only need the developer build if:
- You need to do troubleshooting (such as manually rebuilding the database).
- You want to modify the default software or add additional software of your own (hacks and such).
Other than that, the developer build is not required, either for 3.0 or 2.0.
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#298872 - 05/06/2007 17:17
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/01/2002
Posts: 3584
Loc: Columbus, OH
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Quote:
In my case, even after doing that fix, I had a problem in 3.0 where after a few synchs, all my playlists would get scrambled and a bunch of songs got orphaned. That's why I've stuck with 2.0 since then. But your playlists might not be as large or as convoluted as mine, so that bug might not bite you.
The way to get around this is to use JEmplode only to add and remove music from the player, and to completely exit and restart JEmplode after each synch if you're planning on doing multiple synchs.
A bit of a pain, but if you follow those instructions, you can use 3.0 quite happily withough your database getting scrozzled.
_________________________
~ John
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#298873 - 05/06/2007 17:49
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: JBjorgen]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/02/2002
Posts: 3212
Loc: Portland, OR
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Quote:
scrozzled.
/me learns a new word.
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#298874 - 05/06/2007 20:40
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: dewdman42]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Quote:
So I'm not sure that original music database got hosed. If I get time next week I will try 3.0 again and use the steps mlord outlined for manually building a new database. But that will not overwrite the old 2.x one?
The problem wasn't that a database was hosed. It's that 2.0 and 3.0 use different databases. So when you upgraded to 3.0 for the first time, it didn't see a database, so it built it every time you booted. By doing the instructions above, it will make sure to not only make the new 3.0 database, but also save it to disk for future use.
By reverting back to 2.01, all you did was return to the same 2.0 database that had been there all long and works.
As far as developer builds vs consumer builds, just load the developer build. Even if you currently have no plans to use the features it offers, you might need them for working through one of the FAQ procedures or other troubleshooting situations. Better to just have it there from the start (since it doesn't harm anything, nor slow anything down) then to need to load it up everytime something might need to be troubleshot.
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#298876 - 06/06/2007 16:11
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: webroach]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Only the 5G CENSORED supports gapless, to be pedantic.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#298877 - 06/06/2007 17:11
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Perhaps I wasn't clear about the CENSORED. It does do gapless, but only via trickery on the server side. It doesn't do it on the fly. You must specifically mark the tracks in iTunes to be gapless, and then it tags the tracks in a special way so that the player can overlap them properly without having to do any processing on the files. I don't actually know what it's doing to accomplish this, but I know that the player doesn't try to do it on the fly.
This isn't a bad solution for gapless at all; it works quite well, I'm told. I'm just saying it's not the player doing it all by itself the way the empeg 3.0 software is doing it.
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#298878 - 06/06/2007 17:27
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: tfabris]
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old hand
Registered: 23/07/2003
Posts: 869
Loc: Colorado
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Quote:
This isn't a bad solution for gapless at all; it works quite well, I'm told. I'm just saying it's not the player doing it all by itself the way the empeg 3.0 software is doing it.
Oh, to be sure. But yeah, it does a phenomenal job with it.
_________________________
Dave
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#298880 - 06/06/2007 21:10
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
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Really? I think the current CENSORED nano is also gapless, but that's just going from when it came out....
Hugo
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#298881 - 07/06/2007 12:06
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: altman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Well, I meant as far as the main line. I didn't know about the Nanos, Shuffles, etc., although it seems that the 2G Nanos are gapless. I still don't know about the Shuffle.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#298882 - 07/06/2007 14:47
Re: What is new in 3.0?
[Re: tfabris]
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member
Registered: 27/01/2006
Posts: 142
Loc: New Jersey, USA
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Quote:
Perhaps I wasn't clear about the CENSORED. It does do gapless, but only via trickery on the server side. It doesn't do it on the fly. You must specifically mark the tracks in iTunes to be gapless, and then it tags the tracks in a special way so that the player can overlap them properly without having to do any processing on the files. I don't actually know what it's doing to accomplish this, but I know that the player doesn't try to do it on the fly.
This isn't a bad solution for gapless at all; it works quite well, I'm told. I'm just saying it's not the player doing it all by itself the way the empeg 3.0 software is doing it.
I understood the opposite to be true. I don't own an iPod, but, AFAIK, the gapless flag in iTunes is only used to tell iTunes what tracks not to crossfade when listening to them from iTunes. Other than updating the firmware, I don't believe there are any manual steps required at all to make the iPod honor gapless transitions.
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